


A New Normal

by amour_de_tous



Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types
Genre: Gen, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Implied/Referenced Torture, Loss of Identity, Loss of hope, Non-Graphic Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-22
Updated: 2019-03-22
Packaged: 2019-11-27 23:06:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 885
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18200222
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/amour_de_tous/pseuds/amour_de_tous
Summary: Bucky Barnes didn't break at the hands of HYDRA. At least, not at first.





	A New Normal

**Author's Note:**

> First time actually posting official fic, go me. Not actually as dark as it sounds. All the ouchy parts are only referenced. Unbeta'd. Find me on tumblr at amour-de-tous.tumblr.com.

Bucky didn’t break, at first.  
  
Steve had come for him once; he’d do it again. And, even if he didn’t (even if that fall was great enough, big enough, fast enough that Steve--that the brass, that everyone--thought _there’s no way,_ well. There’d been no way for Steve to be in the European theatre, a foot taller and more’n a hundred pounds heavier, either, so what did any of them know, anyway)? There’d be a way out, sometime. Probably. The war would end, at least, and then the POW’s, they’d all be sent home. That’s what he was, right, a POW? Again.  
  
So he just waited. He waited, for Steve, for an opening, for his arm (for where his arm used to be, and, God, he couldn’t look at it without being sick) to stop hurting just enough that he could fight a guard, two, ten, and get out of there, get…  
  
Wherever. Somewhere that wasn’t _here_ , wherever here was. Somewhere cold, definitely.  
  
That’s not to say he sat in his cell and played pinochle. For one, he didn’t have any cards or a partner to play with, and then there was the part where the Russians--and HYDRA, because apparently HYDRA was Russian now, not German (or Swiss?)--tortured him.  
  
Even this, after awhile, becomes routine. You get used to your new normal, whatever that is. He’d gotten used to breaking up back alley fights, he’d gotten used to hauling crates at the dock, he’d gotten used to not enough in the bank or on the table or in his belly, he’d gotten used to Priest’s reading last rites over Steve. Then he’d been thrust into a whole new set of things to get used to: basic, itchy wool uniforms, feet that were always cold and always wet. Battle. Death.  
  
Steve.  
  
Not sure he’d gotten used to that last one, quite yet; when he thought of Steve, now, Steve still wasn’t Captain America, not in his mind’s eye. Steve was scrappy and wiry and ready to fight anything that had a nasty word (that last part hadn’t changed, just Steve’s ability to really _do_ something about it). It took a minute, always, for him to adjust the picture projector in his mind, to have Steve take Alice’s mushroom and get big big big.  
  
So he waited. Even torture, after a while, is just the new normal. He spat smart remarks and blood, he rattled off his name, rank, serial instead of screaming, and sometimes he screamed just to mix things up. Just to keep the boredom at bay, that's all.  
  
Sometimes they left him alone for long stretches of time. He was delirious more often than not, had no way to count the days, but it didn’t matter. He wasn’t sure if it was the fall, the head injury, the hours of almost freezing to death, the malnutrition, or the fire they injected into his veins seemingly whenever the hell they felt like it, but time seemed to stretch and warp, going funny shaped around the edges. Sometimes everything moved like slow honey, turning to crystal like in winter at their tenement in Brooklyn; never enough heat, always too much draft.  
  
They take what’s left of his arm and he screams and screams and screams, vision going black with it. He thinks _I’ll never forget that sound as long as I live_  and he’s conscious but not aware, when he strangles the man who leans over him.  
  
They put a new arm on him and that should be his chance, that should be when he puts his grand plan into place, except he hasn’t broken but he’s just so _tired_. He needs a good night sleep, and then he can break out. Bust outta here like Buck Rogers in a heroic move. Just one good night sleep, and maybe for the electrical sensations crawling up his neck from where the metal thing's attached to him to just settle down. For him to get used to it.  
  
They sent in guys in white coats to mess with his mind, guys in white coats to mess with his body, guys in fatigues with really big sticks to make him scream. They said _you have no name, Soldat_ , and he just laughed, because fuck _you_ , Vlad, his name was James Buchanan Barnes, 32557038, Sergeant. Through it all he doesn’t break, doesn’t bend. Through it all he holds onto the truth of everything, that he’s not alone, no matter how he feels.  
  
After a while he dropped the fuck you, the Vlad, and the Sergeant. He dropped the serial number. He just held onto the important things: His name was James Buchanan Barnes, and out there, somewhere, Steve Rogers was looking for him.  
  
The headlines they showed him, printed in neat black and white, said _Rogers disappears._ They said  _Rogers MIA._ They say _On the 25th of March, 1945, Captain America, Steve Rogers, disappeared over the Atlantic in a heroic flight_. They said  _The hero who sacrificed everything._ They said  _search efforts continue._ They said  _search efforts called off_.  
  
_Presumed dead_.  
  
_A nation mourns._  
  
_Steve Rogers dead_.  
  
Bucky didn’t break, at first. But even the strongest man can only fight the pain, the torture, the forced memory loss for so long until they say _ready to comply._


End file.
